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Living in the Now

Have you ever noticed there are no straight lines in the universe? Everything has a curve somewhere. Even that old ruler at school had a curve at the end, although you may need a bedbug-sized perspective to see it! What we tend to do, however, is try to straighten out the world.

It comes from the impulse to control. We think we can straighten out other people, gardeners think they can straighten out their garden, countries think they can straighten out other countries, and sometimes our arrogance stretches as far as the weather, as we attempt to manipulate its mysterious patterns.

But the world just doesn’t work like that. It works in curves, or to be more precise, cycles. The carbon cycle, the water cycle, the economic cycle, the cyclical movements of orbiting planets are all testimony to the idea that the world goes around, it doesn’t go along.

When we are conditioned by linear thinking we can only see in straight lines, and if we can’t, we become frustrated. Yet even the world in our heads moves in cycles – thought, feeling, action, result, thought, feeling action, result. And most mystically of all, time itself moves in straight lines or cycles?

The day, the year, the seasons are all cycles that define the rhythm of our lives. In these cycles there is both, a sense of completion and completeness that sits alongside and awareness of continuity. What is momentary sits comfortably within the eternity of what is!

There is a symmetrical beauty in the turning of a wheel, perfection and harmony in a rhythm that turns back on itself to begin again. At any point on the surface of the wheel of time the past is the future, the future is the past, and the present a meeting of the two, when all is contained in one singular, infinite moment called NOW.

Viewed from the centre of the wheel the viewer is still, while the wheel of time and change moves perfectly around. Leave this central viewing point and the nature of the changes within the movement of the wheel attract attention, absorb energy and give rise to a different sense of reality.

It is a reality where constant change is simply the nature of life. After ‘some time’ in a changing reality, the peace and the all-encompassing awareness of the original still point will be yearned for. Some sages have tried to teach us that there is only this ‘NOW’, and that living in the present moment is the only way to fully experience the true beauty and richness of life throughout time.

They have tried to teach us that the only way to perceive and hold an awareness of all time and all space is from that point of stillness that we carry forever at the very centre of our consciousness. Unfortunately, we have developed the tendency to get trapped in our memories, or to be preoccupied with worrisome futures.

Unable to ‘be still’ at our centre we have a habit of missing the present moment and, it could be said, a large part or our ‘real life’. In the world we all share, ‘reality’ is only NOW and never in the past or in the future.

Being mindful of ‘the moment’ and knowing the reality of NOW is the art of seeing that every moment has a value of its own, even if the experience of that moment does not connect with any of our ambitions, or goals, or mental preoccupations.

Every day contains infinite opportunities when we can return to being ‘in the moment’. To spotlessly clean a window, or sweep leaves in the backyard, is a physical experience that has its own significance and nobility. This is one reason why monks of many faiths recognize the spiritual value of routine agricultural work, such as digging, planting and other activities that we might normally consider tedious and banal.

They knew that the time signified by the machines we call watches was nothing compared to the timelessness that could be experienced by being fully present in the moment, fully mindful of whatever action is being performed. They knew that cycles of change into which we offer our activity, were made of unlimited moments of eternity.